Schools of development

re: Schools of development

Christopher Hawkins — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 09:43:00 GMT

I am on the edge of my seat, chief...don't keep me waiting too long. I'm a sucker for a good "development methodology" story.

re: Schools of development

William Dowell — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 11:30:00 GMT

Another eye-opening post. Thank you. I look forward the next rendition :)

re: Schools of development

George Handlin — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 01:23:00 GMT

So do I!

Take Outs: The Digital Doggy Bag of Blog Bits for 25 February 2004

Enjoy Every Sandwich — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 07:23:00 GMT

In the bag tonight: Less bitch'n and whin'n. Counts:Blogging: 8; Dev: 22; Otherwise: 8; SQL: 5; WILY: 8. Line of the night:

re: Schools of development

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 17:03:00 GMT

You forgot the "If it compiles, ship it" school, which is more common than most people think.

Avoiding typical pitfalls

Chris_Pratley's WebLog — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 13:10:00 GMT

re: Schools of development

Louis Parks — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 01:03:00 GMT

"a lot of it is just that people assume we know what we are doing and don't question the design of features even when they don’t work for them"

I think another reason is that people have given feedback in the past and have seen nothing come of it. For instance, many have complained for years that OE has an NNTP client but Outlook does not. Every new release of Outlook continues to shout to those people that Microsoft doesn't care about that issue. I'm sure there's a reason that the Office team considers good for not including an NNTP reader or <insert feature here>, but Microsoft generally isn't transparent about explaining why things aren't included.

re: Schools of development

Chris_Pratley — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 12:11:00 GMT

Louis, it's possible that's why only a few thousand people provide feedback, but I don't think it is the main driver. I don't think we actually have data on that one yet. My feeling is that most people who install it are just so overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the product that they just try out what they used to do last version and can't find problems, so they don't give feedback.

Generally, the beta is offered at a time when few design changes can be made in the main Office products, since it is in a stabilization phase. This is a mismatch of expectations, since the beta testers often assume they can get the whole design changed, or a significant part. The design feedback was taken earlier usually, and the broad beta for Office is more about stability.

The newsreader point you raise is typical of a continuing request that hasn't fit the scope of a particular project yet. Someday its time may come. There isn't always a good explanation for why things are not done - sometimes there is no time, sometimes it doesn't make the cut compared to other issues, and sometimes a feature doesn't fit the theme for a release, meaning it is hard to talk about broadly to customers. Certainly the Outlook team has heard that feedback.

Chris

Let's talk about Word

Chris_Pratley's WebLog — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 13:36:00 GMT

re: Schools of development

Bill Gates II — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 19:44:00 GMT

You completly ignore the fact that Microsoft used undocumented features in it's API to defeat rival software applications. You sir are slime.

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re: Schools of development

Alex Aguilar — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 23:02:00 GMT

I must admit I adhere to approach 3), the Princeton method or "Forward Motion" as Joel Spolsky refers to getting it functional and working the bugs out later.
http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

re: Schools of development

Robert Björn — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 23:18:00 GMT

Something that I've wanted in Outlook is proper support for IMAP. Every release I've tried, it has sort of worked but not completely. For example, in Outlook 2002 I don't think there was a way to automatically put sent messages in the remote Sent folder. I think a service pack might have addressed this but I didn't try it. In Outlook 2003, this is indeed possible -- but it also appears to store the sent message in a local Sent folder as well. I haven't done extensive testing and perhaps there is a way to get this working (I don't use IMAP any more, for this reason) but it puzzles me, IMAP support has never quite seemed to work just right in Outlook.

Anyway, I'm babbling now and got a bit off topic. I liked the article, as always!

Regards,

Robert Björn
Stockholm, Sweden

re: Schools of development

Alex — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 00:07:00 GMT

This page has been appeared on one of the idiot magnets, namely, Slashdot. Soon you may see a few idiots making stupid accusations all over again.

re: Schools of development

Jonathan Buzzard — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:40:00 GMT

Actually winding the clock back to 1995, and comparing Word 6.0 to WordPerfect 6.1, and WordPerfect was a much superior product. Last time I looked Word still had not aquired the equivalent of WordPerfect's "Make it Fit" expert. Sure you can fiddle manually with margins, font sizes, line spacing etc. to make that letter that has gone a couple of lines on to the second page fit on one side again. However this antiquated compared to bringing up the Make it Fit expert selecting one page and clicking on OK. Which takes about 20 seconds maximum. An invaluable tool for some one sending out letters all day long. Lets face it short documents such as letters etc. must make up well over 90% of all documents created in Word.

Back in 1995 all the grammer checker in Word could do is complain about my documents being in the passive voice. Of course they where in the passive voice, I had just spent ages specially crafting them in the passive voice as they where scientific reports. On the other hand with WordPerfect, I could select a check box and it told me when stuff was *not* in the passive voice.

The reveal codes feature can also be a god send when things go wrong. Remember Word reformating your entire document because you changed printer! Also don't get me started on Ami Pro which licked the pants of both Word 1.0 and Word 2.0 for Windows.

Word did not just succeed because it was a better product, because it was evidently not. It succeed because a perception was created in peoples mind that it was better through marketing, and because Microsoft was able to lever its monopoly in the operating system to maximize the small advantage it had, and used the propriatary formats to lock you in.

re: Schools of development

Zaine Ridling — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 13:44:00 GMT

Chris, besides its ease of use and features, the one thing that stunned me about OneNote was that it was so well-developed for a first version app — much like seeing a 17-year old with big breasts. Moreover, the outlining features were not perfect, but they were better than virtually any product out there. Finally, what sold me was OneNote's import/export abilities. I save all essential content and files as text files (call me nuts, but it's a universal format and UltraEdit is a fantastic text editor), and when the content I created in OneNote not only exported perfectly to my text editor, but also to Word, then I was sold right there. That ability alone saves me as much as 20-45 minutes over an entire day (12-14 hours in my case). The only factor that slowed my purchase was OneNote's exhorbitant price — 37% more than MS Office S/T on the street — which forced me to wait two months to save the money.

re: Schools of development

C. J. — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 17:25:00 GMT

I was surprised that nobody made reference to Richard Gabriel's "Worse is Better" Essay. 1. is what he calls "the Right Thing" and 2. & 3. are versions (I think) of what he calls "Worse is Better." 3. is 'WiB' done right, 2. is done poorly.

C. J.

re: Schools of development

Chris_Pratley — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:03:00 GMT

Jonathan, although WP has some good features and some that Word doesn't have or that are better than Word's, I couldn't disagree more with your characterization of history, and the bookcase full of awards outside my office for "best word processor" starting from 1990 onward humbly disagrees with you as well. Feel free to read more about this in my more recent posts where I go into extreme detail on this topic.

re: Schools of development

Chris_Pratley — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:04:00 GMT

Zaine, I don't know if you are located in US or Canada, but if you are I hope you took advatange of the $100 rebate. Thanks for your support.

re: Schools of development

Dylan — Fri, 07 May 2004 02:12:00 GMT

Chris,
Is there anyone blogging on MSF issues at present? I find your descriptions of how your work on Word and OneNote progressed tantalising in what they don't say about practical implementation of MSF principles.